


Problem Sleuth: Bittersweet Secrets

by nihilBliss



Category: Homestuck, Problem Sleuth (Webcomic)
Genre: Alcohol, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Cabaret Reference, Corporate Espionage, Detective Noir, Gen, Great Depression, Humor, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Second Person, Silly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-02
Updated: 2020-05-02
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:28:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,129
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23956903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nihilBliss/pseuds/nihilBliss
Summary: The Great Depression has hit everyone hard, including honest problem sleuth... uh, Problem Sleuth. But when a dame wrapped in tailored clothes and badly constructed metaphors slides or blows or... somethings into his office and his life, things will never be the same. Eventually. Once he gets out of the prologue.
Comments: 3
Kudos: 6





	Problem Sleuth: Bittersweet Secrets

**Author's Note:**

  * For [GumbaMasta](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GumbaMasta/gifts).



The sun bakes the streets and everyone in 'em, and there are more than a few people cooking in that cruel afternoon. A crowd spirals out from the relief office like too many eels in not enough river, mapping the shortest road back to one of the bigger Hoovervilles in the city. Nobody knew when the door would shut and lock for the day, but when it did, there would be fists and feet beating against it, blows far less hurtful than the voices begging for mercy. That was a hard thing to come by, and if the preacher-man was to be believed, God himself was rationing it.

But you’ve never gone by what the preacher-man said. No, you just close the curtains in your office, done watching the scene below. You stare across your desk and into the hallway, hoping for movement. You do this through the window in your office door, the one that’s painted with your business name. Everyone said you needed to hire a “real sign-painting professional,” but you must have saved dozens of dollars by doing it yourself. Okay, so you messed up the spacing and you painted it on the wrong side of the window, but so what? Who cares if your potential clients saw "SMELBORP" when they walk by? Details like that were easy to hand-wave. The only details that matter are the details of how you’re going to pay your rent and put a little more space between your lifestyle and the way those poor bastards below have to make do.

You reach into the decorative glass bowl on your desk and paw out a few pieces of old-timey candy corn, which you devour as you think. It’s not easy to be a private dick at the best of times. Now, half the city's just as broke as you, so you really shouldn't be counting on someone with a fat wallet and a problem in need of your private dicking walking through your office door. Maybe you should call your old rival, Ace Dick, and see how welcoming the kidnapping industry is to newcomers. There’s probably some rich heir or banker who’s been underpaying their security staff. All you would have to do is do a little sleuthing – your specialty – and find a good target. Then you would have to either incapacitate or threaten them, then bring them to some kind of safehouse, and...

Ah, hell, who are you kidding? You can’t pull off that kind of tomfuckery. When you’re not using it for virtuous tasks, your Skullduggery stat shrinks like a jimmy in ice water. You sigh and reach into your candy dish for more sweet, tri-color nepenthe. But your fingers find only smooth glass. Hrmph. That was your last bag, too. You sigh and sink into your chair, wondering just how irresponsible it would be to spend some of your rent money on more candy for your dish. Maybe it’s time you accept your fate. The cabaret is still open, and you’re still in shape. You could always pick the whole exotic dancing shtick back up, see who’s game to bounce nickels off your ass. Better bruised than broke.

But fate can be funny sometimes. Not ha-ha funny, though that does happen, but ironic funny, like when your office door opens and a plain-dressed dame slides through like red-eye gravy dripping off a hot biscuit. Well, plain isn’t quite the word. She’s in the kind of stuff that rich dames think broke dames wear – not glad rags, for sure, but a simple, tailored dress that fits just a little too well. And if you’re honest with yourself – which, what else is this kind of narrative structure for – she’s real damn pretty: gams up to her eyes, curves in all the right places, eyes the color of the sky on a perfect day, that sort of thing. Even her buck teeth look cute under those horn-rimmed glasses.

“Are you mister, uh, Smelborp?” she asks, voice as smooth as melted chocolate.

Yep, that sure is you, you announce. Smelborp’s the name, and you may not know what the hell a borp is, but you can smell one from a mile away. Maybe that’s just what you’ll call problems that dames have from now on. You take that idea and file it away for later. You ask this doll what you can do for her.

She wrinkles her nose, clearly not a fan of being called “doll.” Rookie mistake; you should know better than to talk to a classy broad like this like she’s some kind of common gal. She’s something special.

“Gosh, you know, I believe I’m in the wrong place,” she says. “Does the, uh, Problem Sleuth work in this building?”

That’s you, you assure her. Smelborp is just a cover name. You messed with the wrong people a while ago, and they decided to do something vaguely threatening blah blah blah. You aren’t keeping close track of the words coming out of your face-hole, so you’re not sure if you’re spinning a coherent lie or not. Your head may be pretty full of empty, but there’s a little sense left rattling around in there, enough that you interrupt yourself, calling it a long story and ask what kind of moneyed dame problems you can help her with.

“Why would you think that, sir?”

You point out the way she’s dressed, just like you did in your head a few paragraphs ago. It tells you she’s trying to hide something, and you have a hunch it has to do with why she’s come to you. She cracks the barest smile, and those teeth get even cuter.

“Maybe you are as good as they say you are,” she says. “Alright, I’ll play ball. My name is Hanna Sassacre. I’m...”

The daughter of the late Colonel Sassacre and heir apparent to the queen of baked goods herself, Betty Crocker, you interject.

"As a matter of fact, yes. Well done. That’s why I’m here, to a...”

Only, you interrupt, word on the streets is her and the big lady are on the outs. Have been for some time, if what you hear is right. That’s a shame. Probably has something to do with why she’s here, too.

“Well done again,” she says, nose wrinkling just a little. “Then we can skip some of the...”

And you bet that she’s looking for some kind of way to earn the big lady’s trust again by helping solve some kind of major industrial espionage scandal that’ll make the Teapot Dome look like just another weekend in New York City, thereby helping her reclaim her inheritance and bring joy to all of Washington State with her wonderful baked goods and kind, generous...

“Would you please stop interrupting me?”

You apologize. You get ahead of yourself sometimes. As you smooth over your faux pas, you walk around your desk and pull out your “guest chair” for her, the wooden one you painted “guest” on the back of. You’re about to offer her some candy corn when you remember your stash has been emptied because you can’t fucking stop eating it because you’re some sort of animal who has no control over his urges in times of lingering economic crisis. Whatever. You sit, and you motion for her to go ahead and tell you the whole story.

“Well, you’re right about a few things,” she begins, “but I have no interest in making friends with that woman. Actually, I want her destroyed.”

Wait, destroyed? You’re not sure what kind of work this flighty broad thinks you do, but you’ve never, y’know, rubbed someone out before. Well, you suppose it can’t be that hard – you own a revolver, so it’s just a matter of point, shoot, and get away with it. And this dame sure is pretty. Plus, she’d be the heiress to a baking empire worth a fortune! And the pay if you could pull it off? You’d be swimming in candy corn for life! Maybe you’d finally buy busts of your favorite actors, movie stars Clark Gable and Errol Flynn: the manliest men who ever manned. Ah, what a life you’d have if you just murdered Betty Crocker for her daughter!

But wait! That’s a terrible idea! You’d never get away with it. It's Betty fucking Crocker! No point in helping a broad if you ain’t around to reap the reward, know what I mean? Know what I mean? I mean it's hard to get paid for a hit when you're in jail, is what I mean.

“I’m sorry, am I boring you?” she asks. You must have zoned out. Guess you shouldn’t have hit the flask and made hanky-panky with the giggle water during your work hours; your imagination score runs away with you sometimes. You insist you’re just thinking and compel her to go on.

“So as I was saying, I spent my youth not as her daughter but as her servant, washing laundry, cleaning shoes, threatening would-be union organizers – you know, the work a businesswoman would usually hire an assistant for,” she says, her voice quivering just a little. Imagination or not, you can hear real pain, try as she might to bury it. “When I turned 18, I left. She had her lawyer track me down and force me to sign a non-disclosure agreement. In exchange for my silence about the way she treated me, I would receive a modest sum of money – hush money, as it were. Enough that I wouldn’t be tempted to find an associate of Mr. William Randolph Hearst with whom I might share her secrets. Which is where you come in, good sir.”

This sounds less and less like a hit the more she speaks. It’s probably good that you kept your mouth shut. Just like Grandaddy Sleuth says, a closed mouth gathers no foot.

“That’s an odd saying, but I do appreciate its sentiment,” she says. 

Wait, you said that out loud? Ugh, it’s so hard to tell what’s dialog and what’s narration when you can’t just say words with quote marks. You ask her to explain your role so the narration can focus somewhere else while you regain your composure.

“Of course,” she says. “Your role is to destroy her reputation. I don't care what you have to do. If she treated me like that, she must have other skeletons in her closet. Find them, bring proof, and I will put that awful woman so far out of business, her head will spin."

Oh, so she wants you to do the industrial espionage? Well that’s not a big deal. It’s sleuthing problems. Sleuthing problems is basically your name!

“Isn’t your name Smelborp?”

Yes! Yes, of course it’s Smelborp. Problem Smelborp Sleuth. That’s your name, e.g. the grave you dug for yourself, and you’ll stick to it, e.g. lay in it. Anyway, what’s in a name? A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

“Shakespeare,” she says, a smile at the edge of her lip. You feel like you’ve been given a major award, and pride swells in your breast.

“Anyway, about the matter of your fee,” she begins.

You cut her off, hand up. Feeling particularly chivalrous, you insist that you couldn’t take a penny from her, at least not until the work’s done. There are rules about that sort of thing, after all.

“Are you sure? I mean, I can afford it,” she says.

You wave your hand and insist it’s fine. You’re happy to work on spec for someone with her... you say influence but you mean beauty. You linger before saying influence long enough that you’re pretty sure she knows what you actually meant, or at least that’s what her frown tells you.

“Okay, well, I’ve got a meeting to go to, so here’s a number you can call me at if you need a stipend,” she says, handing you a scrap of paper. “Let me know when you have something.”

She stands and blows out of the door, a whirlwind as turbulent as when she blew into your life a couple of minutes ago, a total revision of that awful red-eye gravy metaphor from earlier. You sigh as you recenter your thinking and your imagination stat returns to its baseline. Time to get to work – you pull your drawer open and pull out your book of phone numbers. There was a time when you knew someone who was in freight shipping – maybe they know something about this Crocker woman and her dark secrets. It’s a good place to start. Hell, if you hurry, you might be able to earn your pay and make rent! You reach into your candy dish for something to pep you up and...

Oh motherfucker.

**Author's Note:**

> Edited by LumenInFusco


End file.
